So climate denying Crusher Collins is promising to weaken global warming legislation???

The great hoax of the 52nd Government was Green and Labour assertions that their  weak promise to maybe do something about being Carbon Zero in 30 years was somehow any meaningful response to the climate crisis engulfing the planet.

As the north is struck by a once every 500 year flood, as Siberia burns, as viruses driven by overcrowding and habitat depletion become pandemics, how we transition our economy to a self sufficient and sustainable model is more crucial than ever and demands responses far more significant than the window dressing Labour and the Greens have provided us with.

So what is National’s response?

Why they intend to water down the window dressing…

…considered by the industry who will have to reduce them they are considered too high, by the rest of the scientific community it’s considered far too low!

At some point the sunset dairy industry will be replaced by synthetic milk and synthetic meat, that’s a reality. To refuse to cull herds to meet our methane targets while facing up to that technological reality is not leadership, it’s bankrupt.

Put aside the dirty politics, put aside the malice, put aside her deep connections to China, put aside the tyrant she would become in power, does everyone comprehend how much of a climate denier Judith is?

I’m not talking her normal red meat dog whistling, nod, wink, unsubtle playing to her National-Party-low-horizon-imagination-hate-the-greenies-and-can’t-accept-climate-change-rump-supporters, oh no.

I’m talking full blown the earth-is-held-up-on-four-elephants-standing-on-a-space-turtle kind of climate denial.

Judith published an opinion piece on the fossil fuel paywall gated community that is ‘Carbon news‘ last year which argues against zero carbon, the Paris agreement and downplays the magnitude of what we are facing.

She is doing the classic ‘question the science’ tactic, which the tobacco industry used to argue there was no clear connection between cancer and smoking. She is also signalling to the deep pockets of the pollution industry that if she was leader they would have a much more benign environment to operate in.

Judith is also directly leading the climate denier electorate who refuse point blank to accept any of the science. Here is what science blog has had to say about Judith’s absurd claims…

The Zero Carbon Bill implements this agreement for New Zealand. It implements what the National-led government agreed to when they signed the Paris Agreement, which Judith Collins now states “is not justified by any scientific findings” – this after innumerable scientists and delegates, including those of the New Zealand government, pored over and agreed to every word. Since the Agreement was signed, the IPCC 1.5ºC report – “1.5 to Stay Alive” – has strengthened the case for 1.5ºC. There is a broad consensus, both in New Zealand and internationally, about what needs to be done. Contrary to what Collins claims, the NZ emission target does not have “almost zero chance of being achieved”; it is entirely feasible and will lead to health and economic benefits for all New Zealanders.

As for “there is no indication they [the costs of global warming] are insurmountable”, it partly depends on what value you place on mass extinction and the loss of treasures like the Great Barrier Reef, not to mention coastal cities. How can this be surmounted?

The existential risks are real if difficult to size up. Hans Schellnhuber, founder of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and climate advisor to the EU, Angela Merkel, and the Pope, said in 2018, “I think there is a very very big risk that we will just end our civilisation. The human species will survive somehow, but we will destroy almost everything we have built up over the last two thousand years. I think we have more than a five percent chance of [preventing this]. But it’s definitely less than 50% in my view.”

…the greatest irony in all of this is that Muller was engulfed in trouble because he had a MAGA hat – Judith Collins however is closer to Trump’s climate denial and style of revenge politics in a way Muller never was.

We can’t water down something that is already ridiculously watered down and pretend that’s a legitimate response to climate change!

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